Retro Video of the Week: "Merry Xmas Everybody" by Slade

As we are now firmly entrenched in the holiday season, as we always do this time of year here at GMYH, the Retro Videos of the from now until Christmas will be holiday-themed.  While the normal parameters of Retro Video of the Week are that a video has to have been from the "MTV Era" -- which I consider August 1981 (when MTV launched) to May 2000 (when I graduated from college) -- I bend the rules for the holiday-themed videos, since there aren't a ton of them and I don't want to have to post "Last Christmas" every year.

With that, I give you a true holiday classic, Slade's "Merry Xmas Everybody."  Lead singer Noddy Holder and bassist Jim Lea wrote the song at the behest of their producer, rock legend Chas Chandler -- formerly of the Animals and the man who was arguably most instrumental in making Jimi Hendrix into a star -- who asked the band to write a Christmas song.  Holder and Lea wrote the song as kind of an ode to a traditional British family Christmas, and with lines like "Are you hanging up the stockings on your wall" and "Does your Granny always tell you / That the old songs are the best," I think it does a fantastic job of capturing the joy and familiality (of that's a word) of the holidays.

The song was an instant success, hitting #1 on the UK pop charts and becoming the band's best-selling single by a longshot.  And thanks to digital sales, the song has hit the Top 40 on the UK pop charts eight times since 2006, not to mention a few times in the '80s and '90s.  And I think I just decided that, should I have the opportunity to sing karaoke at any point in the next couple weeks, this will be the song I sing.